UN braces for Trump-style diplomacy

President-elect Donald Trump wants to undo some of the biggest U.N.-related accomplishments of the past decade, including the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord. The U.N. bureaucracy won’t be able to rely on Barack Obama anymore as a firewall in front of a GOP-controlled Congress that’s skeptical — at best — of the 71-year-old organization’s value.

Current and former diplomats say that Trump already has a playbook to undermine the global body — the one written by Republicans like George W. Bush’s controversial U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, a decade ago. The sharp-edged Bolton is expected to be a key Trump adviser and could even be his pick for secretary of state. Bolton wrote this week in the Times of London that “the peculiar cultures of UN enclaves such as Geneva and Turtle Bay in New York make UN deliberations more otherworldly and irrelevant than most outsiders can imagine.”

Working with the GOP-controlled Congress, the Trump administration could slash U.S. contribution to the United Nations and scramble efforts to implement the climate agreement and other programs carried out by the U.N. Trump pledged on the campaign trail to scale back American involvement in the United Nations — likening it to his promise to rethink U.S. commitments to NATO. “Same thing, smaller numbers,” he said of his approach to the U.N.

“It’s a good football to kick for the black helicopter nationalist crowd” — A former senior U.N. official

But compared to walking away from NATO, which would face major congressional resistance, a Trump administration move to pull back from the U.N. might be easy.

“If you stack everything from pulling out of NATO to a China trade war on a continuum of unlikely to more likely, action against the U.N. seems likely because it’s a relatively low-hanging fruit,” one former senior U.N. official told POLITICO.

“It’s a good football to kick for the black helicopter nationalist crowd,” the former official said.

Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, was part of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. General Assembly earlier this year and worries about the names being floated for Trump administration jobs. Most of them “don’t really see the value in multilateralism,” he said.

“There’s a long history of Republican administrations questioning, challenging investigating or not supporting American engagement in the United Nations,” Coons added.

“Even in normal times you have a Congress that’s fairly opposed to the U.N. and the executive normally acts as a firewall,” the former senior U.N. official notes.

John Bolton was a controversial U.N. ambassador under George W. Bush | Kirk Irwin/Getty Images for SiriusXM

The George W. Bush administration saw the United Nations as roadblock to invading Iraq and its other military priorities. The Obama administration has been the opposite: The most multilateral U.S. administration many diplomats have ever seen.

But come Inauguration Day, diplomats at the U.N.’s New York headquarters will be have to figure out how to deal with the Trump administration, which seems likely to avoid large multicountry treaties and de-emphasize the role of international organizations. On trade, Trump said earlier this year “we shouldn't make agreements with 12 countries. We should make agreements ... one-on-one.”

For example, Elisasson said, “you could make the case that [supporting U.N.] peacekeeping operations saves the United States from being involved in a number of critical areas where they might have otherwise had to send troops.” It’s an argument that might appeal to the voices in Trump’s orbit more inclined to reduce the American footprint globally.

How the U.S. will approach its Security Council role is another question. Whether it’s in the war in Syria, Iran’s nuclear program or Chinese maneuvers in Asia, the council is an important forum for a broad array of U.S. foreign policy decisions — and the kind of thaw in U.S.-Russia relations that Trump has hinted at could change the prevailing dynamics.

Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, fears the Trump administration may make moves at the U.N. “that would be against our national interest.”

For his part, Foreign Relations Chairman Sen. Bob Corker, a GOP Trump supporter, is not worried that the president-elect could turn the United Nations into a conflict zone.

He said that by the time Trump takes office “a lot of water is going to go under the bridge.”

A Trump administration feud with the United Nations would hardly be unprecedented. In the late-1990s, North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms helped engineer a scheme for the United States to stop paying its dues to the organization. The prolonged standoff over U.N. reform left a bitter taste in many diplomats’ mouths — although ironically, it was a time when U.S. politicians were unusually interested in the minutiae of U.N. affairs. At the behest of then-U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, Helms became the first legislator to speak before the U.N. Security Council in February 2000.

But the George W. Bush years marked a low for the U.S.-U.N. relationship, from the Iraq War debate to repeated investigations by the Republican-controlled Congress into the infamous Oil-for-Food program. And for U.N. experts, Bolton casts a long shadow. Democrats filibustered Bolton’s confirmation and George W. Bush made him a recess appointment in 2005; he then resigned in 2006 after Democrats won the Senate. During his time at the United Nations, Bolton was known for his intransigence, diplomats say.

Bolton continues to criticize the institution, slamming the U.S. financial contribution as too large. (U.S. funding accounts for just over 20 percent of the regular U.N. budget).

Some say incoming U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister and the head of the global agency in charge of refugee policy, will be well-positioned to champion the U.N. during the Trump era. Diplomats say that as a former head of government, he has more top-level real-world experience than any other incoming secretary-general. Guterres is a strong supporter of protecting refugees, and will champion the issue in face of Trump opposition, supporters say.

The Trump camp has floated a number of other possibilities for State, including Mitt Romney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Bolton is already warning Guterres against an ambitious global agenda, writing in The Wall Street Journal that Guterres will “be more productive if he concentrates on his limited turf, such as by reforming the U.N. secretariat’s bureaucratic morass.”

That’s tame stuff compared with Bolton’s previous statements on the U.N.; In 1994, he said that "if the U.N. secretariat building in New York lost 10 stories, it would not make a bit of difference."

“The prospect of someone like Bolton sends us back to the difficult situations we had in the past and distract us from what we need to do, because we’re going to have to manage a difficult personality,” one European ambassador in New York said.

But Bolton doesn’t have a sure path to Senate confirmation — Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), has signaled that he’ll try to block Bolton’s nomination if he’s tapped for secretary of state.

Plus, the Trump camp has floated a number of other possibilities for State, including Mitt Romney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Richard Grenell, a U.S. spokesman for the U.N. Mission during the Bush and Bolton years, has been floated as a potential Trump pick for U.N. ambassador. He’s best known for his fiery Twitter presence, which has been a source of past controversy.

Whoever ends up running the Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts, foreign diplomats worry that its U.N. relationship will be a far cry from the Obama years.

Without the support of a founding U.N. member and its largest donor, U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Eliasson told POLITICO, “we are considerably weaker.”